


I Had A Sister Lovely In My Sight

by orphan_account



Series: I Lost Myself, But Now I Breathe Again [2]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia (Movies), Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: AU - Edmund lives, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Incest, Post - The Last Battle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-24
Updated: 2015-06-24
Packaged: 2018-04-05 15:56:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4185903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Edmund writes a book, comes to an alarming realisation about his opinion of Susan, and gets a shock. Edmund/Susan, implied Peter/Lucy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Had A Sister Lovely In My Sight

**Author's Note:**

> This is a POV switch and sort-of sequel to _Let Me Take You When I Go_. It was originally meant to be a scene in that story before I realised it didn't fit anywhere, and it got longer and longer. Edmund is a very hard character to write, for me at least, so this is also a kind of exercise in writing from his POV.

Edmund felt like he was two people at once, and it made his head ache just thinking about it. On the one hand, there was King Edmund the Just, who arrived in Narnia under circumstances he still hated to think of and left it forever over a thousand years later. On the other, there was Edmund Pevensie, who had never done anything remarkable beyond answering every question on his English history test with events from Narnian history, had just lost all but one of his family (his aunt and uncle did not count) and three friends, and was stuck in a wheelchair for another three months.

The only thing that made life bearable was Mrs. Vincent, Susan's landlady. She was a kind, motherly person whose late husband lost both his legs in the Great War, and the first time they met - before he knew this - she dumbfounded him by offering her sons' assistance to help him in or out of his wheelchair if he wanted. Right now, he was in his wheelchair in her kitchen, peeling potatoes for her while she prepared soup and talked away at the same time.

"You should keep up your studies, then you won't fall behind. You never know; you might even overtake the other students," she said cheerfully.

"I've been thinking about writing stories," Edmund said, setting a finished potato in the pot and starting on another one. "To send to a newspaper, you know."

"That's a good idea, too, as long as you don't spend all your time writing. The stories are the only things worthwhile in most of those papers, as long as they aren't the gloomy things most young authors nowadays write. Worse than the penny dreadfuls, they are."

She continued to grumble about the state of literature these days. Edmund half-listened and said nothing. He'd thought about writing for some time now, but this was the first time he mentioned it to anyone. There was only one other person he could have mentioned it to, and there was only one subject he could write about, which was why he didn't say anything. Susan and Narnia no longer went together; talking about one to the other was a sure recipe for awkwardness and hurt feelings.

 _Maybe reading a story about Narnia would make her remember it,_ he thought hopefully. "Ow!"

Mrs. Vincent hurried over to his side. "What's wrong?"

"It's nothing. The knife slipped."

Edmund's idea of "nothing" and Mrs. Vincent's idea of "nothing" did not coincide. Before Edmund had a chance to protest, the landlady fetched a first aid kit, applied a plaster to the cut, decreed that he should spend the rest of the day in bed, and called her younger son, Ralph, to wheel him back to the flat he shared with his sister. Talk about much ado about nothing.

 

" _'' This must be a simply enormous wardrobe,' Lucy said.'_  Dammit, I've done it again!" Edmund rubbed out 'Lucy' and replaced it with 'Rose'. He looked back over the rough draft of chapter one and groaned. He'd referred to Emma as Susan, Charles as Edmund (writing about himself was... unusual, since it forced him to consider himself as others saw him), Paul as Peter, and Dr. Oakby as Professor Kirke.

He snapped the notebook shut.

Writing stories, even ones based on real events, was nowhere near as easy as you'd think. He had to remember who said what, who was where when, fill in the blanks as best he could, and stop referring to the characters by their real names.

"You'd laugh if you could see me now, Peter," he told the ceiling. "Your brother, who broke the White Witch's wand, who stopped her coming back to life, who wrote the basis for all old Narnian laws - yes, I know you and the girls helped, but I did most of the writing, and my wrist still aches when I think of it - and who fought a sea serpent, has been defeated by a story."

As the wind blew past the window, it made a noise very like Peter's laughter, and he was sure he felt Lucy's fingers thread comfortingly through his. Just showed how your imagination could play tricks on you.

A knock at the door snapped him out of his reverie.

"Mr. Edmund?" Herbert, Mrs. Vincent's older son, called through the door. "It's time to go if you want to meet Miss Susan on time."

  
As Edmund waited outside the dentist's where Susan worked, he suddenly realised that there was no wind today.

  
If writing a story was difficult, writing a story while keeping it hidden from your sister was harder. Technically, Edmund could write while Susan was at work, but he could never concentrate fully on it and made some truly ridiculous errors. He still didn't know how he called the Witch White's dwarf "Uncle Harold". The only times he felt like writing were the times when Susan was home, and keeping his ever-growing assortment of notebooks and rough drafts hidden was a headache rivaled only by negotiating peace with Telmar and driving off overly-enthusiastic girls who were sure they were destined to marry him.

The nights were the worst. During the day, writing, reading and studying kept his mind off the fact that he and Susan were alone. At night, there was no way to ignore the crushing sense of loss, of guilt that he was still alive and they weren't. Every night was like being stabbed over and over by the Witch, and he hoped the pillows muffled his sobs.

"What's wrong?"

He almost jumped out of his skin. Susan sat next to him, her hand hovering over his shoulder.

Not muffled well enough, then.

"I'm sorry I woke you." She'd never been fooled by his deflections before and he felt he'd go mad if he didn't tell someone, so he forced himself to continue.

  
Susan meant well by spending the night with him, and he was glad she was there, but it made getting to sleep rather difficult. For some time now, he was aware that his sister was a very attractive girl. In Narnia, during the Golden Age, she had been considered the most beautiful woman in the world, but back then he'd been too busy sorting out the problems her beauty caused (like that debacle with Rabadash) to notice. Now, he had plenty of time and not enough to do, and he couldn't avoid noticing. It was yet another reason he could hardly believe King Edmund the Just and Edmund Pevensie weren't the same person any more. King Edmund the Just would never have had less-than-brotherly feelings towards his sister.

Eventually, he drifted off into an uneasy sleep filled with bizarre dreams of him attempting to propose to Susan but being constantly interrupted by Rabadash attacking Cair Paravel while Peter, Lucy and their parents had a tea party with Aslan and Eustace wailed about nerve food and wanting to go home in the background. How odd.

  
  
In retrospect, shoving the paper at Susan and ordering her to read chapter one of "The World in the Wardrobe" without a word of warning wasn't his best idea. She still overreacted. The fact that trying to make her remember _was_ one of his motives was entirely beside the point. It wasn't relevant, anyway, since it turned out she remembered all along and just pretended to forget, and whatever his intentions were, the result was the Narnia became even more of a taboo subject than before.

  
It took three months for things to get better, and then along came Harold and Alberta Scrubb. Edmund supposed he owed them some thanks, however grudgingly, since no matter how annoying they were, they put him and Susan very firmly on the same side for once. Nothing like chasing off unwanted relatives to break whatever ice remained between them.

 

No, his eyes weren't playing tricks on him. There really was a pile of books with titles like "How to Write a Novel", "Writing Non-Fiction" and "The Art of Writing" on the table.

"Susan, what _is_ this?" he asked, thoroughly confused. "Where did all these books come from?"

"I borrowed them from the library," was her matter-of-fact response.

Edmund picked up one titled "Writing Made Easy" and flicked through it. "But why did you borrow them?"

"Because last night you said you couldn't finish the book because you didn't know how it would end, and there's bound to be something in one of them about how to finish a book."

"...Su, you're a genius."

That was when it dawned on him, with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the skull, that he loved his sister in a not-brotherly way. Now _there_ was a revelation he could live without. Maybe the last few months shook his faith in God, whatever name He went by, but he knew that it was against some commandment somewhere for brothers to fall in love with their sisters. It was against English law, too, and one of those things that would utterly shock anyone who heard of them.

Yet no matter how hard he tried to deny it, the fact remained that he loved Susan.

  
" _A tried and tested way to prevent distractions that would interrupt your writing is to outline your plot. First drafts should be written quickly, because_ -"

"Ed!"

Edmund tore himself away from "How to Write a Novel" to find Susan glaring at him sleepily. A very unhelpful part of his brain commented that even with her hair a mess and her make-up conspicuous by its absence, she was still beautiful. He silenced that part hurriedly.

"What's wrong?"

"It's twelve o'clock, we're going shopping tomorrow, I'm tired, that light is shining in my eyes, and I don't want to hear you talking about books."

"Oh. Sorry." He pushed the book under the bed, reached cautiously over her to turn off the light (two people sharing a bed meant for one was an awkward business, and you had to be very careful not to knock the other person out of bed or fall out yourself) and settled down to sleep before his brain processed the second part of her speech. "What do you mean, 'we're going shopping tomorrow'?"

"We both need more clothes."

He pulled a face, a waste of effort since it was too dark for Susan to see. "There is no way in hell that I'm going shopping with you."

  
_How did she talk me into this?_ he thought miserably as he waited for Susan to finish selecting dresses she wanted to try on. _Peter, you went with her on a shopping trip once; why didn't you warn me what they're like?_

"What do you think of this one?"

Edmund looked at the dress his sister held up to her shoulders. Then he looked again. It was a blue-grey outfit that he thought was meant for special occasions, but not knowing much about women's fashions, he couldn't be sure. More to the point, it was at least an inch above the knee and had a surprisingly low neckline. Of course, his imagination couldn't leave well enough alone and promptly supplied a definitely exaggerated image of her wearing it. Damn it; this was enough of an ordeal without unwanted thoughts of his sister in less than decent clothing.

Oh. She was still waiting for an answer.

"Where would you wear it?" he asked, deciding this was the safest thing to say.

"Emma, one of the girls at the office, is getting married next week; I thought I could wear it then."

The idea of Susan wearing _that dress_ to a wedding where any lout could see her infuriated him for reasons that were not at all connected to a brother's protectiveness.

"It's up to you," he forced himself to say. "You're the one going."

Susan smiled pityingly at him. He ignored her, because that couldn't possibly mean what he thought it meant.

  
It did mean what he thought it meant.

"No! I am not going to the wedding of some girl I've never even met!"

"She sent a get well soon card while you were in hospital."

"But I've still never met her!"

"She specifically invited you. She said, and I quote, 'Please bring your poor little brother along. He must be so lonely, having to stay home all the time, so it's bound to do him good.'"

Edmund glowered at the innocuous-looking invitation on the table. "'Poor little brother'? 'Bound to do me good'? Who does she think she is? And how old does she think I am?"

Susan gave him the benefit of her "I'm-very-disappointed-that-you-could-behave-like-this" stare, the one she perfected on overly-forward suitors and runaway princes. It wasn't as effective on younger brothers who had been Kings of Narnia, but she did her best.

"I'm not going."

"I've already accepted for you." He gaped. Undaunted, she continued, "I knew you wouldn't accept, so I accepted for you before I even told you. You'll have to go; King Edmund the Just wouldn't refuse an invitation to a wedding, would he?"

No answer, so she went to plan B. " _Please_ , Ed? For me?"

He felt his resolve weakening at the pleading tone she adopted. "...Can we leave before the reception?"

And that was that.

  
The last time Edmund wanted to murder someone this badly was on the _Dawn Treader_ when Eustace was still a nuisance. Susan wore that dress to the wedding, and the moment the reception (which they couldn't avoid for fear of offending Susan's friend) started a young man made a beeline for her. His intentions were clear from where his eyes constantly strayed throughout their conversation. Once again, Edmund wondered if his crutches would make good bludgeons. It was a subject worth further investigation, and if anyone objected to him beating the groom's younger brother to a bloody pulp, he could say it was part of a scientific experiment.

As if she could read his thoughts, Susan looked over the man's shoulder at him and fixed him with a steely glare worthy of the most irate centaur. There went that idea.

He couldn't bear another moment of standing awkwardly in a corner watching this travesty of humanity making less than subtle and often downright crude suggestions to his sister, so he went over and politely but firmly insisted that he needed to speak with her alone.

"What happened to you?" the man asked rudely. "Fall down the stairs?"

Edmund tightened his grip on his crutches and forced himself to put thoughts of braining him with them out of his mind. Susan came to the rescue.

"If you don't know, it's none of your business, is it?"

He retreated, stunned into silence, and Edmund led Susan out of the hotel ballroom into the garden.

"What's wrong with you?" Susan spared him the trouble of speaking first. "I saw the way you looked at him; I haven't seen you so angry since Mother said you and Lucy were to stay with Aunt Alberta and Uncle Harold."

"That... That... _being_ was eyeing you like a piece of meat! And you let him!"

"And if you'd paid any attention, you'd have seen that I didn't like him any more than you did. Thank you for storming in like that, but -" She stopped short and looked at him, wide-eyed. "Edmund Pevensie, you're jealous!"

Edmund turned bright red. Was it that obvious? "I'm not! Well, I was, a little, because I'm your brother and it's my job to protect you from men like that -"

"I didn't mean you're jealous just because you're my brother."

She knew. She knew about his feelings towards her.

They stared at each other in silence. Finally, Susan turned away.

"We will talk about this later," she said, in a tone that brooked no argument.

Edmund watched her return to the reception with the knowledge he'd just driven away the only remaining member of his family weighing down on him like a tonne of bricks.

  
With every step towards the door of their flat (would it soon be just Susan's?), Edmund's heart sank further and further until it was somewhere on a level with his feet and it was all he could do to keep walking. Susan hadn't said a word since the fiasco in the garden. He didn't dare look at her for fear of seeing disgust on her face.

She closed the door behind them and a very uncomfortable silence fell. Edmund knew he should say _something_ , but he couldn't think of anything that wouldn't make matters worse. 'I'm sorry, but I'm in love with you, so I'll just be moving out, then' wouldn't go down too well. He shifted awkwardly, wishing for a witch to overthrow, a werewolf to kill, anything that would take him far, far away from here.

"Ed..." Susan began. Odd; she didn't sound angry, or horrified, or anything like that. Had he jumped to the wrong conclusion? Had she attributed his jealousy to some other reason? Was his secret still safe?

The silence stretched out into minutes and she didn't continue. For want of anything better to do, Edmund focused on the flower-patterned wallpaper and imagined the different flowers were opposing sides in a battle. He was in the middle of mentally describing a truce drawn up by the roses and presented to the daisy king (queen?) when Susan coughed and shifted awkwardly.

"Ed," she began again. "I'm sorry if I... I mean, I didn't want to... Oh, damn it all!"

Edmund raised an eyebrow. His sister must be very upset indeed if she resorted to swearing.

"What I mean to say is, do you... have you... Do you love me?"

"Yes," he replied honestly. She never specified what kind of love, after all.

"I mean... Are you in love with me?"

There it was, the question he'd been dreading. He couldn't avoid it now. He racked his brain for something to say that would soften the blow when Susan spoke again.

Edmund did a double take. " _What_ did you say?"

She raised her eyes from the carpet and almost whispered, "I think I'm in love with you."

If she told him Uncle Harold and Aunt Alberta were holding a cocktail party on Sunday and wanted her to cook a steak for the guests, he couldn't have been more surprised. All he could do was stare blankly, even as part of his mind shouted "Yes!" and did a victory dance. Susan loved him. Susan was in love with him. All his fears were for nothing. Susan _loved_ him.

He stumbled forward, almost fell over his crutches, and kissed her. It wasn't as romantic as books said kissing was - he nearly fell on top of her and she bumped her nose against his chin - but he kissed her. And she kissed him back.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from _Mnemosyne_ by Trumball Stickney. I chose it at random when I couldn't find a suitable title and decided to find _any_ title.
> 
> The book quoted isn't a real book, but a quotation I cobbled together from personal experience, actual books and WikiHow articles. I'm probably taking wild liberties with late-1940's fashions and wedding receptions, so apologies to anyone who knows better.


End file.
